“Bevin” is Kentucky’s tea party-tilting Republican governor. He got elected (not with my vote) after vowing to cut the state’s Medicaid program and axe Kynect, the state’s health care exchange under the ACA.

About half a million Kentuckians got health insurance via connect, about 425,000 through Medicaid, Cheves wrote.

Jack Conway, the state’s Democratic attorney general, was pro-Kynect. Bevin won with 52.5 percent of the vote. Conway got 48.3 and an independent managed 3.7 percent.

Cheves cited a study by Andrea Malji, a political scientist at Lexington’s Transylvania University. The prof said she “crunched state data and found a ‘99 percent confidence level’ between the counties' Medicaid enrollment levels and their gubernatorial choices.”

Added Cheves: “The larger the Medicaid numbers, the more likely they were to back Bevin, she said. The lower the Medicaid numbers, the more likely they were to favor ... Conway.”

Malji is from rural Pulaski County in eastern Kentucky. Pulaski has been rock-ribbed Republican since the Civil War. But Bevin even beat Conway in traditionally Democratic counties in the region, notably Pike and Breathitt, Cheves pointed out.

Bevin swept my end of the state, once dubbed Kentucky’s “Democratic (as in party) Gibraltar.”

“There's either voter disconnect here, where the people weren't thinking about or weren't aware of Bevin's stance on health care, or these counties just have higher levels of social conservatives who thought it was more important to vote on social issues," Malji said of her home county.

One of my union buddies calls them “the three Gs—God, guns and gays.” Among many, if not most, non-city-dwelling white Kentuckians, social issues trump—pardon the pun—economic issues like how to get and pay for health care.

Like the rest of the non-urban South and Middle West, conservative, evangelical Protestant Christianity is the dominant faith among rural whites in Kentucky.

Bevin is a New England transplant. But he and his family go to Southeast Christian, an ultra-conservative, evangelical mega-church based near Louisville.

A month before the presidential election, Bevin met a group of conservative pastors at the governor’s mansion in Frankfort and told them to ignore federal law that prohibits tax-exempt churches from urging the election, or defeat, of political candidates.

But some conservative ministers have been flouting the law for years. Bevin and Trump want the law abolished; a plank in the 2016 GOP platform called for its repeal.

Gail Hardy of Cadiz, a retired teacher and Democratic party activist, said many rural, white, Protestant fundamentalist churches “have been hijacked by the Republican Party.”

Cadiz, population about 2,600, is the seat of Trigg County, about 50 miles east of Mayfield, where I live. Bevin carried Trigg with 55 percent of the vote; Trump triumphed with 73.1 percent. (He got 60.8 percent of the vote in Graves, my county; Trump piled up 76.4 percent of the vote.)

Hardy said that in her county, conservative organizations commonly provide white fundamentalist churchgoers with “voter guides” just before election day. I’ve been shown the same sort of pamphlets.

She said a few years ago she saw a “pre-election Sunday sermon” that was sent to pastors in Trigg churches. “The sermon was to be delivered on the Sunday before election day the next Tuesday.

“The sermon was designed to cause the people to feel they were not doing ‘God’s will’ if they didn’t go and vote for the Republican candidates.”

Hardy said the sermon was also designed to win over waverers by convincing them it was better to be “safe than sorry and not risk being out of God’s will.” She maintained that the message was crafted to encourage unsure congregants to ask themselves, “What if it is true? They might go to hell if they voted for a Democrat, so they vote Republican, too.”

I was reared Presbyterian. The “Frozen Chosen” aren’t big on hell-fire and damnation; Presbyterian sermonizing tends more toward the sublime than the sulfuric.

Even so, perdition is real to evangelicals. Hence, those the Good Book calls “the least among us” are willing to endure earthly want—ascribing privation to “God’s will”—for the prospect of eternal bliss in heaven.

Conservative politicians like the avowedly evangelical Bevin and the ostensibly Presbyterian Trump understand fundamentalism, and they govern accordingly.

“When a man is dying of hunger beside another who is stuffing himself with food, he cannot accept this difference if there is not an authority who tells him, ‘God wishes it so.’”

Jim Pence of Glendale, Ky., who runs the feisty Hillbilly Report Blog, put it similarly, if more inelegantly and irreverently: “Never before have so few with so much promised to take away so much from so many and then laugh their asses off as the so many with so little vote for the so few with so much.”

Bevin is a millionaire. Trump is supposed to be billionaire, though his tax returns may say differently.

At any rate, fundamentalist preachers inveigh against adultery, fornication and cussing. They quote the 10 Commandments, admonishing congregants against blasphemy and bearing false witness. They issue the Biblical challenge that “pride goeth before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Never mind that Trump is a proven serial prevaricator. Forget that his conceit and vainglory would make Narcissus blush.

He is thrice married. He talks dirty and was less than a faithful husband to wife number one.

“Even though Donald Trump has some rough edges, there’s something inside of him that desires the counsel of Christian men and women, and I don’t know one Christian on Hillary Clinton’s team,” said the Rev. Franklin Graham, the bloviating bigot and son of evangelist Billy Graham. (Clinton is a Methodist and Sen. Tim Kaine, her running mate, is Catholic.)

I fervently hope The Huffington Post and Hayes are right that Trump and most of rural white America are divorce-bound. (For the record, more than a few white, rural Americans eschew bigotry; cities aren’t entirely prejudice-free zones, either.)

But I’m betting (and hoping I lose) that a slew of rural white Americans will remain Trump’s Rock of Ages mainly because he is keenly, if not also cynically, attuned to their prejudices: racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, religious bigotry, nativism and xenophobia.

Most of them will desperately cling to Trump as their forlorn hope for an America run by straight, white conservative men. In their America, gays, lesbians and transgender folks stay in the closet, “race mixing” is anathema, minorities “know their place” and women are homemakers and doting “helpmeets” to their menfolk and old-fashioned hate speech vanquishes “political correctness.”

_________________________"Everything that has ever happened to us is there to make us stronger."-John Trudell

Congressman Tom Reed, NY-23, was met by a volatile crowd congregating in the Ovid fire hall Saturday morning, March 11th.

Nearly 200 residents crowded into the fire hall for a town hall meeting with Reed, who represents some 717,000 constituents in his district. Many carried signs, expressing their support for Planned Parenthood, demanding affordable health insurance for all, protection for the earth and demanding Reed “tell the truth”.

Residents took Reed to task on issues important to them, primarily healthcare.

“I do not support the Affordable Care Act,” Reed said. “I will support repeal.”

The crowd responded with a chorus of boos followed by demands for the same healthcare Reed and his colleagues enjoy – insurance that taxpayers pay for. Reed was also criticized for having undergone bariatric surgery when many of those in the crowd don’t even have health insurance.

“My insurance is Obamacare,” Reed said, noting he pays high premiums and high deductibles.

Despite a microphone and sound system, much of what Reed said throughout the meeting was drowned out by shouting from angry residents, including the chant, “Save our healthcare” echoing throughout the fire hall. But Reed managed to explain that the repeal of the Affordable Care Act had a process that must be followed and that healthcare was not going to just go away.

Unlike Medicare and Social Security.

Reed came under fire for government officials using Medicare and Social Security as a “slush fund.”

“Now Trumpcare is going to cause Medicare to lose its solvency four years earlier than before and create billions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires,” one resident argued.Photo of the crowd at the Ovid town hall by Tammy Whitacre, FL1 News

Reed told residents that in their present form, both Medicare and Social Security are already losing their solvency and therefore a change has to be made. Conceding the fact regarding loss of solvency, Reed said he recognized the “sins of past government officials” and assured residents Medicare and Social Security would be moving forward long term. He also noted that the $21 trillion national debt has to be dealt with or Medicare and Social Security will take a hit.

Reed was then criticized about women’s rights and his “critical reaction” to last Wednesday’s, March 8th, sit-in at his Geneva office. Reed was asked to show proof that the sit-in denied the congressman’s staff the ability to help other constituents. Reed alleged his staff was potentially prohibited from using phones and computers by protesters who forced their way in and took over his office. This brought further angst from the crowd.

Reed was applauded for his support of alternative energy sources and his recognition that student debt is at a point of “crisis across the country.”

“It is making the opportunity for greater education impossible for the next generation,” Reed said, noting a program in the works, Vision for Students, and calling for tuition reductions for working families.

But Reed came under attack again announcing his support of allowing parents to send their children to whatever school they want as long as it doesn’t hurt public education. In a small rural community like Ovid, residents believe it does.

“We need all our resources to go to public schools,” one resident said, “And they don’t.”

Among the final topics discussed at the meeting was immigration. The crowd made it clear to the congressman they did not want a wall at the Mexican border. An apple grower wanted to know whether or not Reed has a ready and willing workforce to take the place of the immigrants that will be sent back to Mexico when the wall is built.

“We need a border that works,” Reed said.

The proposed wall and idea that unsavory people travel into the United States from Mexico to commit crimes was met with a chorus of boos and the chant, “No wall”. However, no ideas were forthcoming when Reed asked for an alternate solution to keep the border secure. Reed did outline a proposal welcomed by residents for the Red Card program that would allow immigrants who have gone through a screening process to come and go across the border at will.

Despite angry reports to the contrary by residents at the meeting, Reed noted that he and his staff are always available should anyone wish to discuss a topic further.

Your two articles reveals disturbing trends of the lies, hypocrisy and unethical tactics by the Trump administration. Only 50 days into his "rein" we have made more foreign enemies than we have over the last 30 years. United States has become the laughing stock of the world by means of attempting to police the globe while simultaneously displaying a White House supporting some of the biggest crooks since the Nixon era. Our country has been divided even more in regard to race, religion, healthcare,economics and most of all, morality and ethics. Now Liberals have this huge advantage of being exonerated not by virtue of defending themselves but more so, having listen to 8 years of criticism being created by the GOP who's leadership now defends unethical Billionaires, a lying President, failing to keep the promise of giving individuals a better healthcare options, showing contempt for Muslims and Jews, the list goes on. It seems that the critics of the Obama's administration all went into hiding while losing any semblance of having a backbone toward a racist and hated POTUS.

Republican members of Congress aren't exactly getting a warm welcome in their home districts during this week's recess.

Angry constituents have confronted legislators at town halls across the country, upset over everything from the GOP's plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, the Trump White House's travel ban, alleged Russian interference in the U.S. elections and more. New York Rep. Tom Reed, for example, faced these questions in a series of town halls he held over the weekend.

The backlash is happening in some deep red places, stretching from Reed's western New York district to Kentucky and Iowa. Some national Republicans — and President Trump in a Tuesday night tweet — have tried to dismiss the progressive activists helping to organize the protests.

However, their statements almost mirror the arguments Democrats made in 2009 to explain away backlash at town halls that summer over the health care law. How did that work out? Democrats got a "shellacking" at the ballot box in November 2010.